Today’s questionable business model

So I went to my first NASCAR race on the weekend, down in the US south. Thanks a pile to my clients for setting that up!

It was pretty damn astonishing to go to a sports event with 170,000 or so other people, almost all of whom got there by car and almost all of whom were walking in and around with cans of beer in their hands. I was mildly disappointed the mullet count was almost zero, but I must say the NASCAR crowd has a uniquely loud fashion sensibility. And they buy overpriced souvenirs at the same fevered pace my daughter uses in purse-shopping.

Anyway, between pit stops at Miller beer stands, my buddy Mark pointed out the many large digital signage screens bolted on columns along the speedway concourse, up nice and high so no one would notice them and set at a zero pitch so you’d have to be well back to see them. The character generator crawl was such that it was actually running half below the bottom bezel.

Aesthetics aside, the business logic of the IDIA Network (couldn’t find them online) installing what had to be $100,000-plus in gear in a facility that gets major piles of people a few nights each year escaped me. They’d need big bucks to claw back the invested capital, and from what I have seen of NASCAR there is absolutely no shortage of places to put logos and ads.